Just got a call from my mom, informing me that her former teacher, Oliver Smithies, had been awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine. Nice to hear about it, he always seemed like a very sweet man. More sweetness & light, please.

On walk with P, thinking more about horrors in the Congo, how people tend to respond with talk of international law and human rights. To me, it's a bit like putting a band aid where the wall between some little girl's vagina and anus used to be, pretties it up a bit, but no damn use. Funny how even people rightly suspicious of solving domestic social problems through the justice system, blithely trot out international law in the face of stuff like this, fantasy of a world legal system somehow lacking the defects of every legal system ever implemented. We're living through the most brutal time in the world's history, at least in terms of sheer volume of brutality, our civilization is the driving force behind this, we need to start distrusting our civilized responses and thinking of practical solutions. The problem here is that bands of psychopaths form and rape, torture & butcher people, to me trying to figure out how to interfere with the formation of such bands seems most practical. How to go about this remains something of an open question.

Coffee, shower, pieces slowly drifting into place.

Believe I've mentioned the strange changes in my emotional responses to things since starting my current job, think it's down to regularized schedule, increased exposure to sunlight. Appears to some as my having emotional problems apparently, don't really think that's very apt. I'd say I had an emotional problem (flattened affect) which has largely gone away & I've been needing to figure out new coping strategies for having pretty normal emotional responses, not what I'm used to, a bit unsettling.

Space bar is acting up.

Also think I've mentioned this person I care very much about mistaking some problems with herself for problems with me. She's acted very cruelly toward me as a result of that, quite hurtful, but that's not really a major concern. My major concern has been & continues to be that this misrecognition is going to prevent her from addressing her own problems successfully, it's so scary that it's hard to think about, keep thinking about it anyway. She also has problems with me that actually have to do with me, of course, probably difficult to disentangle. Dislike mess, tend to make a bit of one.

Read a bit about rape epidemic in the Congo yesterday, not very nice. Taken past a certain point, spontaneous empathy can make one a bit harsh, don't really mean to be harsh, reading about people being torn apart makes me feel a bit that way, seeing it more so. Hard to understand why that would be hard to understand.

Stayed up very late finishing trashy scifi novel, therefore having a hard time waking up, like old times.

Going to work a half day at work today, hopefully. Not sure what I'm going to do the rest of the week, weekend was a bit much. Muscles hurt like the dickens.

Amazingly, had happy dreams of fun by the seaside.

Got called into work to deal with mail server crash, not the one I've been worrying over all weekend, another one entirely. All sorted now.

Here are the comedy/horror pairings I've come up with so far:

The Lady Eve/The Lair of the White Worm
Desk Set/Existenz
Bringing Up Baby/Rosemary's Baby

Thinking about starting with the last of these, probably on the 18th, half moon, perhaps inauspicious, but missteps should be less consequential and Chris & my mom will be here. Thinking festive sideboard with comedy, followed by cocktails with horror. Baby bok choy, baby back ribs, deviled eggs, rosemary something or other obviously items for sideboard, should think of more, also appropriate cocktails.

Again, open to suggestions.

Tim dropped off some leftover pastries from works, it's a pleasure universe.

Thinking about instituting a biweekly romantic comedy/horror double feature night, perhaps with festive sideboard, perhaps on the nights of the full & new moons. Two sides of the same coin, it's one I keep in my front pocket. Trying to think of some amusing pairings, open to suggestions.

Went & got some Portuguese bread, also milk, local Galas, Squirt & Eclipse Coffee Syrup, the official drink of the State of Rhode Island. Came home to message from Chris Davis, he is coming up here Thursday week after next after all, will need to shift some schedules around a bit.

Heart is racing very violently, a bit lightheaded.

Might watch Lair of the White Worm.

Soup is quite delicious, going to walk into town & try to find some crusty bread.

Have run out of stuff to do, feel like I'm going crazy. Loving people prone to killing themselves is no joke.

OK, going to go look for bread.

The seemingly impossibly large amount of stuff I had to do this weekend is now basically done, didn't get a chance to take a look at that streaming server, soup is almost done, still a little more work to do, pretty amazed by this.

Just took a long walk with P & gave away some vegetables I didn't see myself getting around to cooking in a timely fashion (a Boston lettuce, four delicatas). Going to chop up some kale for soup momentarily.

Anyway, chugging along frenetically getting stuff done, start crying occasionally, having really awful dreams. It's manageable.

Prepping vegetables for soup, thinking about how strange it is that my favorite kitchen knife is one I had to take away from someone once to prevent her hurting herself, glad I managed that, it's a damn sharp knife.

Done with laundry, just put some great northern beans for soup on to quick soak, things are looking pretty good & clean on upgraded server, going to poke around in that more later, going to take a walk to town now, watch the world go by, maybe have a light lunch.

Worry has taken itself to a point where it's become a heavily transformed consciousness, it's got its good points, noticing a lot of things I probably wouldn't otherwise, can get a lot done. Exposed nerve, terrible clarity, hypervigilant.

Wondering when I'm going to be able to believe anyone saying they're sure about something again, maybe never, maybe that's best.

Glorious fall morning, cool breezes.

Watching Phantom Gourmet's 'Hidden Jewels', waiting for laundry to dry.

My life is often strangely idyllic.

Forget how many times I've been admonished to 'be realistic.' Realism in art is characterized by its preoccupation with having the appearance of reality. Novels about alien invasions and killer robots have long struck me as having more to do with reality than most realist ones. Being realistic is also sometimes thought of as equivalent to showing common sense, can't say I think much of a notion that lumps "2 + 2 = 4", "One drives on the right side of the road", "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife" & "Business is business" into the same set, then smacks a "value=true" label on it. Anyway, realism, common sense, not really my thing, more interested in the real as such & actual sense.

Laundry's well underway, stoking the fires of pure reason with a cup of fresh joe, going to walk over by the paper with P in a minute, take some more pictures of the strange concrete monoliths, they keep moving around. May try to initiate communication.

Photos, photos



Kept waking in a pool of sweat, bleh.

Show was pretty fun, did my spastic hopping giant thing, astonished people with how loud I can scream. Other folks' playing was very soothing & enjoyable, got a call from T, lost in Golden Gate Park, also got some takeout Chinese from the place across the way. Eventually got worried about Peretz & came home again. Took him for a nice walk, then headed over to work to take care of work requiring my physical presence. Been going pretty nonstop for about 19 hours, sort of harsh, sort of nice.

Have a lot more work to do tomorrow, planning to intermix it with a wide variety of relaxed homebodyism, laundry, soup, music, chilling with my pup.

Lying on the couch, kind of hurt all over, going to watch some cartoons.

A light rain has started. Some sort of emergency requiring the evacuation of the 6th floor of the building across the street is in progress. Going to go drop off a sweet potato pie at friends' house, take my equipment, do a rock 'n' roll.

Just back from Ashfield Fall Festival, no German Science Reader, no affectionate, shy chickens (imagine they're happier at home anyway), no trembling beloved by my side- still pretty lovely. Picked up a two volume copy of Carlyle's French Revolution as well as a couple volumes of essays by more obscure essayists, each of which contains an essay on ghosts. Took a lot of pictures, was taking pictures of informational posters about bees when the woman whose posters they were asked me not to, as they are copyrighted. Not sure what's with people, but at least she asked nicely. Anyway, took a picture of a diagram indicating the relative importance of the bee to total agricultural production (long story short, less important than cows & pigs, more important than chickens). Going to respect her wishes as far as actual publication is concerned, copies available privately by request. Talked to her husband about problems they've been having printing their posters (buffer overruns in plotter, pretty weird, they're laying the things out in a GIS), gave some sound advice, hard to tell if it was understood.

Went to Shelburne Falls after, took still more pictures, so many I killed my camera's battery. Thinking about being these same places with Em same time last year, falling down with exhaustion, damn nervous, but happy. Moving around in my head, but in the real world too, things are the same, things are different. Everywhere strange doubling & redoubling.

Driving back from Greenfield, 'Let It Rain' playing on the radio, 'September Gurls' playing in my head, really a lovely song, do you know it?

"September gurls do so much
I was your butch and you were touched
I loved you, well, never mind
I've been crying all the time"

A little 'No Time Left For You' worked its way into my head late in the real world song. For extra credit, determine which of these songs appears on the spleen of the emotional associative homunculus.

Need to walk the dog, eat something, go play show, do some routine server maintenance. Falling down with exhaustion, damn nervous, but happy.

Well, that was exciting. Just spent the past 6 hours dealing with automated upgrade process gang horribly agley. Think I've gotten everything functioning again at the new patch level, wouldn't swear to it, path from here to there was pretty nasty & fraught with peril. What else is new?

Lots more followup to be done, may try to squeeze in Ashfield Fall Festival before that.

Can't sleep. Thinking about things.

There are times when one makes highly consequential choices. Best if they're good ones. If they're not, things can go very badly wrong, often in irreversible, uncontrollable ways.

I try to stay alert, make good choices. Doesn't always work, doesn't always help.

Might seem a bit vague. Isn't.

Took the dog for a walk by the paper, young guy with headphones on didn't notice me in the dark, walked up to Peretz, said, "Hey, puppy, whatcha doin' puppy?" and scratched P's head, then noticed me & jumped a little. Old lady dragging a shopping cart full of branches across the grass. She said, "That's a nice dog." He is.

Got home, had some pie, tasty but will be tastier chilled, slipped into pjs, killing a bottle of brandy I got for xmas.

First degree burn on right side of left middle finger, maybe a bit too much baking while exhausted.

Everything around me seems to be moving in slow motion, trying to take advantage of it.